I think Pipeline is good because you instantly know what you’re doing when you leave spawn. I’ve had to shout at some of my newbie friends while defending Gold Rush: “No, guys, follow…never mind, just keep walking on the train tracks until you see the big blue warehouse.”

I negate the first two by following my classy Steam friends to their favorite servers. Although I suppose that won’t work for an Award Winning Games Journalist with legions of adoring fans hoping some of the magic will rub off through the magic of Steam Cloud.

Actually the bigger problem is probably that your journo friends play a ton of different games. Mine focus on a few, and TF2 is one of them.

Aw, RPS are my enemy? I don’t think anyone told either of us. I guess we have to DDOS each other now.

The RPS and PCG servers, I’m afraid, too often fall deep into the light blue: most of the time they’re either full or empty. I’d add the Hampshire Heavies server to that list too: I find myself there just because they’re often at the top of the ascending-order ping list, and run good maps. But in doing so, I’ve found the HH guys themselves to be a decent bunch of chaps, and the clientele generally pull a few more kilos of their weight than most.

After the rate the Professor Plums were unlocking tonight, though, I’m going to be spending a lot more time on the PCG server.

[shameless advertisement of my prefered server]
The Uberium server is quite good and only usually breaches the being full rule in your list aswell as the turbine one on occasion (less popular maps appear less in the rotation though). but is good clean vanilla official map only. I saw you on it once quite a fair while back, at the time it was clan but that’s shut down now, it also had the hlxstats, but that nolonger spams chat either.
[/shameless advertisement of my prefered server]

My wife has a good server too, with class limits of 2 for sniper and spy (and 3 for everything else). It’s also the only server in the world where I was top of the ranking this one time. There’s just a lot more 2fort than I’d like, though. I actually love pipeline, it’s like hard mode. It does what CTF would be doing (pushing players into attack and defense at the same time) if every CTF map wasn’t just TURTLE TOWN.

I hate servers that have reserved slots. I see a 31/32 opening, I take it – a minute later it says that spot is reserved. It’s so annoying. What’s even more annoying is when you join a server where there is 6 god-damn snipers on one side, but not any side, the side you had to join.

I’ve got the RPS server on favourite but haven’t actually tried it yet – the 300-450 ping from New Zealand is a little rough.

I like Turbine but typically its not a good map to rotate to. Dedicated servers are fun though, if you’re a deviant like me =P Oddly enough I like to compare it to De_Dust because it’s a small, simple enough map with multiple avenues of attack. Rather team dependant but then that’s nothing new ~~

Yeah, I quite enjoy Turbine, if it’s what i’m expecting, and the population is reasonably low. any more than about 16 people jumping on and it devolves rapidly. Hydro is what gets me groan-emitting when it pops up on my loading screen.

I maaaay have skipped over it in the giant rant-thing for light blue, but I think you forgot to mention the whole “going onto a server which supposedly almost full and then finding it to be completely empty”. And just to name some servers that do that: all the GTFO servers, possibly Multiplay and most of the [Fr] servers for some reason…

Empty servers claiming to be almost full is something that Valve went out of their way to fix – they worked out a system for identifying these servers (based on the fact that they attract a large number of players, who almost always quit out right away) and delist them when they’ve been identified

*Time spent waiting forauto-retry to get you into a server you know fufills most of the above.
*Time spent furiously clicking ‘join game’ because you’re convinced auto-retry doesn’t work properly any more.
*Time spent muting mic spammers
*Time spent sitting out in arena.
*Time spent sitting out in arena even though there’s only like four players a side.

I’ve got RPS, the OC and PCG on my favourites list, the OC isn’t bad, they do play turbine a little too much, but they also have some of the more creative player made maps on (frontier is awesome) and almost no arena.

TF2 takes a stupid amount of time to load no matter how beastly your PC is (on a 32 bit OS, at least). Once you’re on a server and changing maps it’s super quick, but getting to that point requires some reading material and a pleasing beverage.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the RPS server was dead except on the rare occasions we bothered to scheduled an event. Now, infuriatingly, it’s perma-full. Well, until it crashes after switching to Redfort.

I tend to play on the OC and HH servers which tend to fufill most of the light blue. The OC has an auto team scramble if one team wins very quickly, so it seems to avoid the team imbalance problem.
TF2 only takes long to load for me when first joining a server on the “Sending client info” part.
I didn’t realise RPS had a server, I’ll have to go and try it out :)

01d55 – servers that slipped through the net were just too busy during the day to lose enough rating points from me repeatedly connecting and disconnecting during the long slow night of TF2. GTFOGaming.co.uk is one of the worst, but that’s not the worst thing to find on a server.

Did anyone see the bots yet? Because that moment when you join a 31/32 server, and sigh with relief at the very real signs of battle audible at the team select screen, is crucial in Valve’s de-listing mechanic. You’re on, like, a http://www.saigns.de server (which look like about seven dedicated valve map servers absolutely creaking with people) and you play for a bit, and everbody’s username has cheeky bot references, and that’s when you get suspicious. Then you build a teleporter on some stairs and hold up your entire team.

I love the PCG server because it’s usually quite easy going. When times are tough for the red team, a server that’ll accept the viability of a heavy rush or a permanent chain of medics is great for reaffirming your faith in the human race. It’s advertised in a mag that at least forty thousand people must read, but it doesn’t feel like a “pub” server, not all the time.

And I don’t believe I mentioned how hilarious that graph is. I like that the “winning” section is a great big chunk, almost bigger than any of the others, but it’s a quarter of the entire pie.

So, Tom, so low you steal from a blog that’s so low it updates once in a week?

I know you guys must be sick of me talking about this, but yah I hardly experience any of this. It just seems that I live in a world where the server is allways full, but there are a lot of people joining and leaving, the teams are allways balanced (team scramble handles that), and fun is generally being had, either serious killing sprees fun or comical joking between players fun. You people can keep living in your arena hating world. I’m gonna stay in my happy bubble.

I don’t really like the PCG server because I usually lag there. It’s on my favorites, though.

On the topic of hats: I saw someone, who must have hacked the game code or something, get all the hats in about five minutes. There was complete uproar on the server when that happened. Much screaming on all talk and all that. Fun times! And the pyro gets a beenie hat! Holy mother of jumping bajeezuz! Does that mean we finally get to see it’s face? For really-reals?

Not to say this is what that guy was doing, but it is possible to produce the found-item messages artificially, without actually obtaining the items.

The B: Yep. Kind of wish it’d break again now, I have no self control. Hence venting my gripes in pie-chart form.

Nonomu: Good point, it was rude of me not to doff my cap to Chris’ Chartcore series. I wasn’t thinking about that when I was making this, it’s a post I wanted to do ages ago and it only just recently occured that this is the appropriate format.

I played 12 hours in my clan’s server over the weekend. That was just with Sniper. So I find my clan’s server pretty good. Each map is voted on by the players, and it’ll rarely go on a bad map. Occasionally, cp_blackmesa, cp_turbine, and cp_steel get through, but we usually persuade everyone to go through another vote — Those maps suck. Anyways, I don’t want to make this sound like an advertisement, but in case any of you want to grace us with your presence, connect to tf.nnnclan.com. Anywho, I should really get on PCG server…I mean I added it to my Favorites List and everything. Maybe I’ll join you later this week.

I waste most of my time on auto-join, waiting for a slot to free up on the PCG server. I’m very grateful to the PcGamer server as it’s given me the engineers miner hat and Jarate. Though other than that I’ve only got a few dupes, which I wouldn’t mind so much if you could combine them to make some sort of super weapon.

I pretty much only play on the PCG server of the Twenty Sided server :S I spend msot of my time waiting to auto-join, but I figure 10 mins of auto-join is worth it when I get myself onto a server that I’ll play on for 2 or 3 hours.

Actually, the PCG server is pretty damned sweet. I love how english we are on there. I am delighted that there is a space on the web for me to be as outragously British as I am.

I use the Server settings thingy and limit myself to about 30 seconds to find a server. I Never go to the PCG server atm – always Full and I daren’t bother with Auto-Join. Plus theres always the danger ill get kicked for one of the staff. In the good-old days when I got on It was jolly fun – Plus thrilling whenever I landed a backstab on one of the PCG staff or rushed as medic to save one of your lives.

Anyone Awake really late at night at around 2am? Servers bound to be clear.

PD102: I am always awake every night until dawn because I am cursed. Also, PCG was full of Arena-whinging till 4am and beyond for most nights since the update, as were many of the servers on my faves. I love the fun servers with the jarate, a lot of them have a mod for infinite jarate ammo, and one had the, uh, “jujizztsu” mod. It was awkward on there. I just went pyro.

Everyone talking about hats: It’s weird getting an unlock that’s cool, because you desperately want to show it to people and tell them about it, but you know they’re going through the torture you were going through until you got it, so it’s weird. Come on Valve, everyone will have everything by the time you put in the trading system (unless it’s now).

@ Ludo: For me it’s need for everything except the backburner, which I have 5 of and counting. This means I either have the worst luck imaginable or the game is trying to tell me I’m god’s gift to the pyro class…

I wouldn’t mind it if Valve still encorporated the whole getting items after unlocking a certain amount of achievements as well as the drop thing, just to cater to the people who have insanely bad luck. Mind you, I guess it would be pretty agrivating if you find an item one achievement away from unlocking it…

Unlock system reverted to the original now. It’s a shame, I think. Although it wasn’t a brilliant idea, something does need to be done. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of negative feedback to find a solution.

And to that chart I’d have to add “Losing due to my own incompetence”. :/

It’s funny: my complaint was that I couldn’t work towards unlocking the things I wanted in the new system. Now that they’ve reinstated the ability to unlock them with achievements, I still can’t: I’d already got eighteen each of the Sniper and Spy ones through ordinary play, so I woke up this morning with everything.

I’m happy to have it all, of course, but oddly not nearly as happy as if Cloak and Dagger or Dead Ringer had popped up at random yesterday. Or if they had when I got 17 achievements as the Spy. I managed to have the progress, and the reward, without ever experiencing the progress-towards-a-reward that usually makes these updates exciting.

mm. I felt overwhelmed by the sudden glut of items and kind of half-heartedly tried them all out. I felt like I cheated. Achievements really weren’t the way to do things, I thought, and I think if they’d examined how their system worked differently than the way they’d envisioned, implemented a trading system, gotten rid of duplicates, or just… something. It doesn’t feel like Valve, you know?

The problem with the proposed trading system is that there aren’t nearly enough items to trade considering you only ever need one of any of them. Unless they were going to go nuts with the accessories, dedicated gamers would end up with a bazillion duplicate items just sitting around.

Maybe a recipe/pawn shop system could have worked, but direct player trading has issues.

Yeah, trade only works if you have scarcity, but at the same time they’re gearing the unlock system to make sure everyone gets to play with the new stuff. If they impliment it soon, trade could still be worthwhile for hats, but otherwise they’ll need to release it with a lot more scarce items for it to be a system worth having.

I’d need three times as many hands to wield all the Ambassadors I now have… the period of scarcity, for me at least, has ended.

I have no idea how Valve can make enough items that trading and suchlike will be an interesting metagame. I wouldn’t mind if they just threw in the towel and gave everyone all of the weapons as they were released – and incorporate the weapon selection into the class menu, so you can pick the right class and the right weapons for the situation very quickly.

Great graph. The pink area summarises my pain… of my 100+ hours of Medic, I’d say about 50 of them were effectively involuntary, trying to fix the team balance. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy Medic, but sometimes blowing stuff up is more enjoyable.

Personally, I can’t seem to find class-restricted servers if I try. What’s the secret? And are there any that just limit Spies? about 3/4 of my pie chart consists of spychecking and being backstabbed, and that’s why I hardly ever play the game anymore, as neither is fun. No, I never play Engineer or Sniper either.